Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, one of his country’s richest men, rose to power promising to crack down on tax evasion and corruption. In 2011, as he became more involved in politics, Babis told voters that he wanted to create a country “where entrepreneurs will do business and will be happy to pay taxes.”
The leaked records show that, in 2009, Babis injected $22 million into a string of shell companies to buy a sprawling property, known as Chateau Bigaud, in a hilltop village in Mougins, France, near Cannes.
Babis has not disclosed the shell companies and the chateau in the asset declarations he’s required to file as a public official, according to documents obtained by ICIJ’s Czech partner, Investigace.cz. In 2018, a real estate conglomerate indirectly owned by Babis quietly bought the Monaco company that owned the chateau.
Sounds like at the very lest it was unreported. We have half the story, which in a lot of cases sounds like fraud. The other half of the story is in tax documents.
ETA: The other thing is a lot of these people have the power to fix these systems that enable corruption, and like Babis, publicly say they will. But are they going to fix the system if they're using it?